January 22, 2024 • 60 mins
Can you heal pain by focusing on joy?
Baratunde Thurston gave what’s been called “the greatest TED talk of all time.” He’s written about being Black in America, he’s got a podcast about community involvement called How to Citizen, and he’s got a PBS television show that explores the beauty and diversity of America.
There’s a duality running through all of this work, and in Baratunde’s personal life: mourning and celebration. From the early death of a parent, to men’s emotional health, to violence against Black men and boys, to the healing power of play and community, this week’s episode is a fascinating discussion of both grief and celebration - and why you don’t get one without the other.
In this episode we cover:
- Baratunde says he’s “wired for optimism” - which makes identifying his own grief… complicated
- How you can lose a parent at a young age and not recognize the impact until you’re an adult
- Why seeing other people be good parents can bring up grief
- Black joy and men’s community (plus the hashtag #BlackMenFrolicking)
- Why is it hard to play as an adult - and find other adults to play with?
We're re-releasing some of our favorite episodes from the first 3 seasons. This episode was originally recorded in 2023.
Looking for a creative exploration of grief? Check out the best selling Writing Your Grief course here.
About our guest:
Baratunde Thurston is an Emmy-nominated, multi-platform storyteller and producer operating at the intersection of race, tech, democracy, and climate. He is the host of the PBS television series America Outdoors with Baratunde Thurston, creator and host of How To Citizen with Baratunde, and a founding partner of the new media startup Puck. His comedic memoir, How To Be Black, is a New York Times best-seller. Baratunde serves on the boards of BUILD.org and the Brooklyn Public Library.
Find him at baratunde.com and follow him on social media @baratunde
About Megan:
Psychotherapist Megan Devine is one of today’s leading experts on grief, from life-altering losses to the everyday grief that we don’t call grief. Get the best-selling book on grief in over a decade, It’s Ok that You’re Not OK, wherever you get books. Find Megan @refugeingrief
Additional resources:
Read Baratunde’s book - How to be Black
Baratunde’s TED talk How to Deconstruct Racism, One Headline at a Time
‘America is addicted to watching me die…’ - Baratunde’s Puck article "Thou
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I'm wired for optimism and possibility. I'm predisposed to a
positive interpretation of the world around me, and some of
that is genetic, some of that is probably biochemical, and
some of that is survival.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
This is it's okay that you're not okay, and I'm
your host, Megan Divine. This week on the show, author speaker,
podcast and television host Baritunde Thurston joins me to talk
about grief and joy, and investing in relationships and the
subversive nature of play, Settle in Everybody. All of that
and more coming up right after this first break before
(00:45):
we get started.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
Two quick notes.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
One, this episode is an encore performance. I am on
break working on a giant new project, so we're releasing
a mix of our favorite episodes from the first three
seasons of the show. Some of these conversations you might
have missed in your original seasons, and some shows just
truly deserve multiple listens so that you capture all of
the goodness. Second note, while we cover a lot of emotional,
(01:11):
relational territory and our time here together, this show is
not a substitute for skilled support with a license mental
health provider or for professional supervision related to your work,
take what you learn here, take your thoughts and your
reflections out into your world and talk about it. Hey, friends,
there's so much to celebrate and there's so much to mourn.
(01:33):
With this week's guest, Baritundae Thurston, this week's episode is
so stacked with joy and silliness. I cannot wait for
you to hear it now. This week's episode also talks
about pain, with grief stemming from personal losses and racial violence,
and generational grief, grief over the changing planet, and I
can't wait for you to hear that either. Baritunda is
(01:56):
an Emmy nominated storyteller and producer, operating, as he says,
at the intersection of race, tech, democracy, and climate. He's
the host of the PBS television series America Outdoors with
Barratundi Thurston, creator and host of the podcast Had a
Citizen with Barratunde, and a founding partner of the new
media startup Puck. His comedic memoir How to Be Black
(02:17):
as a New York Times bestseller, and in twenty nineteen,
he delivered what MSNBC's Brian Williams called one of the
greatest Ted Talks of all time. Baratunde is also really
funny and kind and thoughtful and totally willing to explore
topics a lot of people would probably like to avoid
(02:40):
if they were given the chance. Nobody's given the chance
to avoid this stuff when they're hanging out with me.
But some of the things that we discussed in our
time together, Marratunde's father died when he was a child,
and we talked about how that didn't seem like a
big deal when he was a kid, which is really
interesting for a number of reasons, but one of them
(03:01):
is that he's the second or third guest this season
to have a parent die in their childhood, and they
didn't really realize that there was grief involved there until
much later in their lives. We talked about how he
learned that there was grief there by getting emotional when
he saw his friends being good parents to their own kids.
Also fascinating, there's so much grief we don't recognize if
(03:21):
we're not looking for it right. It's fascinating to know
also that I am not the only one who feels
sadness well up in me when I see somebody being
kind to someone else, Like even if I am completely
not involved in the thing, Like, seeing somebody be kind
and amazing is really emotional for me. So if that's
you to the whole, somebody being kind makes me a
(03:44):
weepy thing. You are not alone in that baratunde, He's
with you.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
I'm with you. We also talked about the.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
Kind of more obvious in your face grief, the constant
news cycles of black men and black boys being killed,
what it's like seeing people who look like you suffering
and being harmed on a regular basis. We talked about
what it's like living in a world where you can
be killed for just existing. And we had this really
(04:13):
cool conversation about getting to decide what you look at like,
how you see yourself and the people who look like
you being portrayed. What images do you consume? Are you
like consuming only painful images? What else is in there?
That led us into a slightly subversive conversation about play
and joy and the healing power of community.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
We talked about a lot of stuff.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
I found this conversation to be so nourishing, so life
affirming in the face of cascading pain and losses personally
and collectively. There's so much bad news in this world.
I don't know if you've noticed, we don't like need
a distraction from the bad news. We have things we
really do need to face, but we might need to
(04:59):
find find ways to let more joy exist alongside all
that pain. As you'll hear Baratunde say when we get
into his hope for the future, there's a lot of
power and potential in our human creativity. So if you've
ever wondered how to create a life that includes both
grief and joy, or wondered if that's even possible, this
episode is for you. Here's my conversation with the excellent
(05:23):
Baritunde Thurston.
Speaker 3 (05:27):
Baraituni.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
I am so glad to have you here with me today.
There are so many places that we could begin our conversation,
But I was telling you before we started ruling that
I've been like living in your collected works for the
last couple of days, and there's just there's so much
joy in what you do and how you show up
(05:49):
in the world, even when so much of what you're covering,
what you're discussing, what you're getting into is really serious
and really painful, and I just like, I feel like
there's this combination of celebration and grieving threading through all
of your work. Does that feel am I accurate?
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Grief and celebration is a really accurate way to encapsulate
the wide range of things I'm up to. You know,
I write about my host shows about I talk about
race and technology and democracy, really easy stuff that always
brings people joy.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
Megan bringing the joy.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
They can be very heavy, and there is a lot
to mourn, you know. There's a lot to mourn with
our planet and with our relationship to nature. There's a
lot to mourn with the racial history in the United
States and our unwillingness to integrate it as a full
part of our whole history, but instead try to like
pretend it didn't happen, which just makes it fester and
(06:51):
come out sideways. There's a lot to mourn in our
loss of ritual and habit and tradition. Because things are
changing so quickly within a single generation, we are losing
touch with ourselves. We had millennia, at least hundreds of
years where a great great grandparent had the same life
as their great great grandchild, and now an older sibling
(07:13):
and a younger sibling are speaking different languages. That's worth acknowledging.
The loss of pattern and legacy in that, and we're
up to some dope things, you know, we still have
We always have a chance to create something new. I
(07:35):
think we have a better shot at it if we
acknowledge the loss as opposed to pretend this death didn't happen.
But it's not the end. Loss is not the end.
Death is not the end. There's a cycle to all
of this, and so I get self motivated by remembering
the cycle and trying not to get stuck in any
(07:59):
particular piece of it, especially the grieving part of it.
No one has encapsulated or tried to summarize what I
do as that as grieving and celebrating, and it's this
duality that I've carried for a long time. So thanks
for seeing that.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
Yeah, I mean that's part of my lens on the world,
right Like that is that is how I see all
of that. I love that you brought up acknowledgment, right that.
For me, the entire thing here is to acknowledge what's
real and tell the truth about how hard it is
to be here sometimes tell the truth about really difficult
things I don't always go with, so that we can
(08:39):
celebrate because there can be something kind of transactional in
that for me. And again I come back to like
the cadence in the way that you speak about things,
the pacing with which you speak about things.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
I never got that sense from.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
You in listening to your TED talks or your podcast
or reading your writing. I never got the sense that
you were acknowledging so that you could move past, but
that there was a twinning.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
Yeah. I mean, if anything, my practice of acknowledgment has
deepened over the past few years. So I'm wired for
optimism and possibility. I'm predisposed to a positive interpretation of
the world around me. And some of that is genetic,
some of that is probably biochemical, and some of that
(09:26):
is survival. And you know, when faced with a certain challenge,
you know, you can see it play out in my
patterns with my wife. She might bring up something uncomfortable
and I'll try to flip it to the pie We're good.
And I don't do that so much anymore. I think
for a long time I didn't trust existing in the grief,
(09:49):
and you know, and if I did, it was intuitive,
but not a self aware choice. It's increasingly a choice
to kind of sit with the pain, the discomfort the
loss of the morning and try to even be grateful
for that feeling. You know, it's such a human feeling
(10:10):
and and to your point, not too quickly try to
transact out of it. Oh aheah, I did. I did
my grieving things today. That was five minutes agrieving and
now I kind of sadness.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
The day I got this.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
Yeah, now now we got this, but the rest and
that's not true or real or honest or ultimately useful.
So I don't think I've been escaping it, certainly not publicly.
But you mentioned the TED talk that talk about deconstructing racism,
and I wove in personal story, which was a choice
(10:45):
encouraged by others. I had a stellar, clever, smart, funny
talk with a bit of anger prepared about racism. I
was good to go, and my wife was like, you
can go deeper. And actually one of the people at
TED kind of nudged me. Get more personal, get more vulnerable,
(11:08):
since there's more there, what's going on there. So I
had these two women in my life who were encouraging
me to not race through, and the final version of it,
I didn't. I paced it, I sat with it, I
slowed it down, and it was much more powerful for me.
(11:29):
And when I left that stage, which people didn't see
as I exploded into tears, just absolutely a release physical
and emotional, and that was a sign for me of
how like real that moment was.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
Yeah, it is such a push, right, Like I know
this as a fellow speaker, and how those talk whisperers
are like, no, you have to you have to bring
your heart to the stage otherwise this won't reach other
people's home arts. And that's difficult. It's difficult on a
lot of different levels. But I think like we well,
(12:06):
I don't want to answer I don't want to answer
this question. I want to ask this question, like I
want to talk about like role models in grief and
grief in the black community, and grief for men, and
grief for the age in which you came up, and
like I think all of that can sort of be
covered by a question like what has been your relationship
(12:29):
with grief, you know, coming from your childhood experiences and
then up through and and where you sit with it now.
I know that's a really big, like dense, dark matter
kind of question which we could take like five, we
could do an entire like series on just answering that question.
But I if I ask you that, like, how has
(12:50):
your relationship with grief changed over the decades, bringing in
all you know about role models and what is safe
and what is not safe to share with yourself or
share publicly.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
Yeah, when I was seven or eight. I really should
fact check the timeline. I'm always thinking I'm seven or
eight and there is a there's a noble there's a
noble date here, but I don't know what this second.
When I was young, my father was killed. He was shot.
It was in the middle of the night. Maybe it
(13:27):
was a robbery. No one was ever found for it.
I remember getting the news from my mother, who was
living separately from him at the time, so I lived
with her and occasionally saw him, and I didn't know
him that well. He was like, he was the father
you're supposed to it is your dad. And I was
given the option of going to the funeral, and I
(13:49):
was like, now, I'm good. I don't looking at a
dead body does not feel like a good time to
this child. I will pass And I cried and I
felt sad, and then I just kind of closed the
door and I lost contact with his family. So I
just had my mom and my sister, my older sister
helping bring me up. And I thought, when I thought
(14:13):
about him, I think I'm good here right like I'm
I'm supposed to be sad or lost my father. I
also know things about him that make it more complicated.
You know, he had a lot of demons and they
showed up in some nasty ways, and I missed exposure
to a lot of that. And whatever supposed to happen
(14:34):
in my life is happening. So I'm grateful for the
life I have and this mom. She loves me, and
I'm healthy, and I've gone to college, and I've got
jobs and paying back loans and falling in love and
just living. And I had not really dealt with his death.
I'd never fully grieved. I grieved my mother's death more
(14:55):
when she died in two thousand and five. That hit
me months later, almost a year, got knocked on my ass.
And I'm still processing her loss because she represented so much.
She was both parents and a village at times, and
with my father, I found myself on this journey prompted
(15:16):
by the universe to reconnect with that grief. A cousin
found me on Facebook. I saw you on TV. I
think I'm your cousin, Like every black person thinks I'm
your cousin when they see me on TV. This is
not special. But she had the paperwork to prove it.
She had the long form birth certificate. She had photos
of me when I was a baby, and I was like,
I know what I look like. I was super cute.
(15:37):
That's me. Those are my cheeks, you know. So that
begeans a relationship with my father's mother, also known as
my grandmother, who I had totally lost touch with. With
his brother and but most importantly, with a version of him.
I started like having these conversations and moments and angry tirades,
(16:00):
just stuff I clearly needed to get off my chest.
And the evolution continued. I'm a part of a men's group.
As a group of black men, we kind of we
hold each other. We hold each other up, we hold
each other accountable, we hold each other emotionally. I've never
had anything like this in my life see dead father above.
So I'm in this circle with many men who are fathers,
(16:25):
and I'm finding I'm getting so emotional about something about them, like, oh,
you're being a dad. I don't know what that's like
and I'm low key jealous, and I'm also like feeding
off of their fatherhood energy that was completely missing from
my construction, from my experience. And I've grieved that, you know,
(16:49):
you can grieve. I've grieved the person. I've grieved the
missed opportunities. I've grieved the the inability for the person
who was my father to heal himself from all the
things that ailed him and caused him to ail others.
That's very much a journey from you know, the kid
who didn't want to go to the funeral and thought
(17:12):
he was okay until thirties. I'm forty five now and
still adjusting that relationship with grief. That's one version of
an answer to your prompt and your question. So as
distant as my relationship with grief was as a child,
there was another example which made it very close, and
(17:34):
it was an example of collective grief. I was at
this private school in DC starting in seventh grade. Sidwell
Friends School is pretty famous now, small black community of
students and parents. My mother is a member of the
Parents of Black Students organization. Organize a gathering like a meeting,
like a little revolutionary sleeper cell meeting that's what you
(17:56):
know we do in white schools. And we were She
organized us into a circle and we all closed our eyes,
and she had us imagine that we were in the
bowels of a ship being brought here and just to
(18:18):
feel what does that feel like? What are you hearing?
What are you sensing? Can we feel gratitude for those
people who made it through that journey so that we
could be here on this stage, in this meeting room wherever,
and she asked us to mourn. There's so much of
(18:40):
the black experience here that is about persevering, making a
way out of no way. There are literally thousands of
songs that channel the same energy, resonate at pretty much
the same frequency of like just getting through it and
not pausing to acknowledge it. And that was a really
(19:07):
early modeling for me of the power of pausing, of
collectively mourning and grieving and acknowledging the hurt and the pain.
There's there's a lot of racial movement education stuff which
is trying to get like white people to acknowledge and
get men to acknowledge what they've done to women. There's
(19:28):
all kinds like in the power Dynamic, get the powerful
quote unquote to admit or acknowledge. But we all have
a version of that. And I think there's a lot
of you know, experience in the black community that's like
I don't want to I don't want to touch that.
That's too painful, that connects too many dots. I don't
want to see that picture. And it's really hard. It's
(19:53):
really hard to do it to like sit still with it,
and then I breathe through it and shed the tears
and then find hopefully through the other side of it,
ways and reasons to keep going. The duality I'm holding
right now is I'm pretty exhausted of the struggle and
(20:14):
pain story. I'm exhausted of the like convinced white people
to be better humans so that I can be human story.
And so I'm you know, looking at other joyful, hopeful
ways of being that don't require waiting for someone else
(20:35):
or accepting as the main narrative suffering. That just doesn't
it doesn't fit me anymore. And so our acknowledgment and
evolution transcendence parallel paths to freedom like joy and silliness.
That's also really, really really important to me.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
Increasingly, you know, I think about your writing about the
killing of unarmed black men and black boys.
Speaker 3 (21:06):
I think about the.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
Rage and the grief and the morning you've written America
is addicted to watching me die, to watching itself die.
And as I was getting ready for our conversation today,
I was like, there's a reason why I started with
your joy when we are talking about what it's like
(21:29):
to be black in this community, and I'm saying, this
is a white person who doesn't fucking know anything about it,
But like there is this like relentless narrative of pain
and suffering, and you have to fight to not be
only identified as that, yeah, which is just like Hello,
it's already exhausting to stay alive in a system that
(21:52):
keeps trying to make you dead and hold you down
and hold you back, And we also have to fight
this hard to have joy, to access joy, and that
that joy and joy is really hard won, right, Like
we prize resilience, right instead of addressing the systems that
force you to be resilient, right, I mean, it's just
(22:14):
such a it's just such trash, And to be able
to ferociously hold onto joy is such a powerful thing,
you know, Like I can talk myself in circles on
this one. But I think that there's there's also something
in what you said that leaving the white folks aside
for a moment, Like it's it's hard to get people
(22:37):
to continue to hold their gaze on how much pain
and suffering there is, right Like seeing black men die
over and over and over again on the news, seeing
black trans women die over and over and over again
on the news, seeing high maternal death rates for black women,
like it's just fucking relentless and touching the grief of that, Like,
(23:03):
I get it that people don't want to touch that.
We don't want to touch grief in general, right, Like
we don't want to talk about any kind of grief.
And you start to get into the complex systems of
grief and the overwhelming grief and the preventable grief, and
it just sort of fries the circuits. Is there a
(23:26):
way that you have found to not do the transactional
joy to celebration thing, but to speak into that grief
and that anger in a way that feels like it
it does the grief justice in a way.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
When I do public speaking since COVID, during COVID, during
my public talks during COVID, I dropped a lot of
my put on diplomacy. I'm a natural peacemaker. I was
in my family as a kid. I helped my mom
negotiate with an angry motorist or neighbor, or I'd write
(24:09):
letters on behalf, you know, to try to get through
some challenge in a peaceful, diplomatic, positive way. And so
I'm the family diplomat, and I've worked in school in
certain circumstances, and that's just I honed that for a while.
I thought, Oh, this is just who I am. I'm
just this naturally positive person, and that's a part of
(24:31):
the story. I also think there's a part of it
which is like, for me to show real rage and anger,
it can be threatening to people and become a threat
to myself. So I have to manage those weightier emotions,
those more volatile parts of myself, because that's just a
story that I've seen too many times. He was in
(24:53):
a rage, he was coming right for me. He looked threatening.
He reached suddenly. I was like, I'm not reaching for nothing.
I staple my driver's license to my forehead when I
drive now it's a little special holder in the baseball cap.
It's great. So you know, this is a reasonable solution
to an unreasonable problem. Just baseball cap visors for your
license and registration, pre shipped to all people of color.
(25:16):
I found during COVID I locked. I lost the ability
to maintain that diplomatic air, and I just let more
of the anger show. There's a there's a physical kind
of metaphor for this. When most of my presentations pre COVID,
I had amazing slides, Megan, I'm so good at like
(25:38):
PowerPoint keynote I have. I could just work. Give me
like some giddy images, a little bit of photoshop, my
font selection, you know, good San Sarah font like, oh
let's go, let's crush this. And part of the show,
even the Ted talk we mentioned that's a slide show.
That is aid show there is. It's timed, this color coded.
It's almost a game. And I was really prided myself
(26:01):
on that. That's also a shield, you know, And so
I put that down. I don't use slides anymore. Now
that we're back in person doing live events, they're like,
what do you need for AV Just a microphone and
light and a backup mic in case something goes wrong,
that's all. Maybe a chair if I get tired or
want to strut around or lean on it with a
(26:23):
smooth affect. Yeah, a little prop But I was not
one prior to let anger into my talks. I let
it flow. Now it comes across in my writing much more.
My way of not transacting through to get to the
joy is to like fully experience the grief, the morning,
(26:47):
the anger, the rage, and communicate it much more than
I'm used to. I've got to let it out when
it's when I hold it in, when I suppress it
with a perfectly timed in place but not heartfelt bit
of humor. Oh look at everything. Okay, my voice goes
up on the black of it is re all fine.
(27:08):
That's a that's a telltale sign. I have learned the
physical tells of myself. When am I holding back and
I'm with my partner Elizabeth, you know she I am
blessed and cursed with a partner who has an incredible radar,
incredibly emotional radar, so she knows when I'm not being
fully forthcoming, like there's no faking it till you make
(27:29):
it with her. Which is a real problem, man, real
Like you gotta be able to keep some stuff from
your part not like you know crimes. I'm just like,
just bake, did you buy the thing? Yeah? I was
going on, Oh man, she do. So I've got more
reps in in practice and my most you know, intimate
(27:51):
and close relationship with what happens when I open that door,
and it's it's harder and it's better, right, I won't.
It's just it's not like, oh yeah, I just I
experienced my grief now and all of my darker emotions
and life's great. You know, like every moment is just
that's not the story. It is not a quick fix.
(28:14):
This is nothing but going through the experience. It just
increasingly feels like me, like the right thing, and then
you know, I can seek out other types of experiences.
There's this thing flying around black men frolicking stilly is
(28:38):
TikTok Instagram reels. I don't know who started it, but
it's just you know, dudes holding up the selfie cam
their arm as selfie stick, running through fields like, oh
we frolicking. I didn't they tell me we was frolicking.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
Yo.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
And one of I have this this brother, our Juna O'Neil.
He's a coach and men's leadership counselor and I've been
working with him and becoming friends with him at the
same time, and he shared this with me and he
did a video. I'm like, I want to frolic. This
is amazing. We never see men frolicking, right, We're not
(29:17):
supposed to. Like frolicking is what girls do or children
or these like weaker beings that we crush in our
minds because we don't want to be anything like that
about men's business, which is stoicism and pain and suppressed
human experiences. That's what it is to be a man,
to let your inner child run rampant through your adult
(29:40):
life because you know no one modeled for us how
to deal with these things except through maybe violence or
alcohol or some other substances or just deep, deep silence.
So I really kind of experience those joyful moments more
fully when I'm myself have gone through the mournful moments too.
Speaker 2 (30:02):
Yeah, there's something about finding ways to be real like
that with yourself, with people with whom you feel trust,
who who can be trusted with that depth, right, and
then being able to bring more of that self out
into the world.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
Right.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
It's like it's not the math equation of like feel
the pain go get your joy. It's more the more
you come into relationship with what is true and real
for you and find ways to communicate and connect inside that,
the more of everything becomes available. Right, And you mentioned
(30:45):
like I love that frolicking TikTok.
Speaker 3 (30:47):
It's awesome.
Speaker 2 (30:47):
I will link to it everybody. But like there is
something dangerous in being playful or something not allowed subversive, subversive.
Speaker 3 (30:57):
In being playful.
Speaker 2 (30:59):
And you know, you think like, oh, it's easy, like
just go do this and this, but like we were
talking like decades, centuries of so many things that say
exactly how you described it, right, Like play is weak.
Joy is weak, and it takes a lot of strength
and trust to play with other grown ups.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
Yeah, it does. That's a good one. That's a really
good one. I remember a poster from maybe the nineties.
Everything I needed to know I learned in kindergarten.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
Oh right, Oh my gosh, Yeah something was that guy's name.
Oh I'm gonna have to go look it up. But yeah,
we're both like, where is it in the brain library?
Everything I needed to know I learned in kindergarten. It's
about like sharing and taking turns and like not wiping
your nose.
Speaker 3 (31:48):
On your sleeve, all all of that.
Speaker 2 (31:51):
Stuff, But there is, like there is there is something
very scary about joy and very scary about play. And
if there is anything transactional in exploring the depth of
emotions or the truth of emotions, it's that you know,
the more you come into connection and relationship with yourself
(32:13):
in that stuff, the more you can come into relationship
with that stuff in others. Absolutely, And I think like
this this sort of also brings us to again listening
to your collected works and reading you and listening to
your podcasts and watching your talks, like not only does
joy and celebration weave through so much of who you
are and how you show up, but also community as
(32:38):
restorative medicine, as necessary medicine for surviving what needs to
be survived. So if we bring community into this, I
feel like that's a nice dovetail from being safe enough
to play with grown ups? Like, Yeah, where does community
come into all of this conversation?
Speaker 3 (32:54):
For you?
Speaker 1 (32:56):
As yearning and longing in part as I'm still relatively
mobile in my life and I'm feeling needs to root
more dig into where I live as urgency given age
and the steady realization like oh, there may be some
(33:17):
maybe less time ahead than behind, like that kind of moment.
I will live to one hundred and thirty. But if
I'm keeping myself in the range of regular mortality, then
you know, forty five is a good time to start
thinking about that kind of stuff. And you know, who
do I love? Who am I spending time with? Like
who's my chosen community? Whose emails I'm going to read first?
(33:39):
You know, like this could be my last email.
Speaker 3 (33:44):
I can sense the overthinking.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
Yeah, okay, all right, so maybe I shouldn't be reading email.
I think I'm just appreciating the specialness of trusted community.
Increasing This Black men's group I'm a part of has
been so healing and beautiful. To have a community of
(34:08):
fellow men who are being emotionally open with each other,
really open, who are nudging each other toward that vulnerability.
I'll bring that challenge your face into the group. There's
some things we cannot do alone, and most things worth
doing we probably you know, shouldn't do alone. There's just more,
(34:32):
literally more with others, and we can share burdens, and
there's a lot of practical values to having other people around.
So yeah, I think I'm becoming more conscious and more
actively aware of like why I'm drawn to people, what
groups of people in community kind of bring out in me?
(34:53):
And there's a magic and an alchemy in a community
setting of being there for each other in different ways,
in different moments, and becoming one through the group, like
a forest does. Everything is everything and then we're just
(35:13):
trees with thumbs and you know, more selfish and tendencies.
But the idea that these trees have this you know,
underground root system and they hook each other up and
one is low on nutrients and one is diseased and
transmit information back and forth through fungi. Maybe like community
is a life thing, right, It's not just a human
(35:37):
human thing. And so I just I'm in awe of that.
I love it. It makes me want to be a better
community member and be more intentional with like who I'm
in community with and what am I doing? What am
I bringing to you know, community, what am I offering
to a community? Which is and in a non transactional sense, right,
(35:59):
just for the relationship value. You know that our men's
group is not a finance group. We're not like investigating
each other's come that might happen at some point but
that's not the goal. It's just to be in relationship.
And that's so it's a real prerequisite, I think, for
a whole life.
Speaker 2 (36:26):
Hey, before we get back to my conversation with Baritunde
thirst And, I want to tell you about a new
way to get answers to your questions about grief. Each month,
every month, I host a live video call in Q
and a session just for patrons. If you've ever want
us to know if what you're feeling is normal, come
ask me. If you want to know how to have
that conversation with your nosy relative who keeps butting into
(36:49):
your business with their ideas about what your loss or
your experience should look like, come join us. I'll help
you figure out how to communicate a boundary where there
needs to be a boundary once a month, every month,
if you've ever wished you could talk to me directly
and get your questions answered, this is by far the
easiest way to do it. All of the information is
(37:10):
at patreon dot com, backslash Megan Divine, or you could
find the link in the show notes. I hope to
see you there this month. All right, let's get back
to my conversation with author, speaker, television host, ridiculously awesome
human being Marratunde Thurston. We have this pacing in our
conversation today of like personal collective, personal collective, personal collective
(37:32):
which I love. I love a micro macro pacing here,
and a lot of what you're talking about in your
own personal community building. That's part of how to citizen, right,
is how do we become.
Speaker 3 (37:46):
A true collective culture.
Speaker 2 (37:48):
How do we show up in our local communities, how
do we show up in the larger world?
Speaker 1 (37:53):
Right, there's something and the good the you know, citizen
as a verb is our whole thing, and you can't
citizen alone. It's antithetical to the idea of being a
member of society and being in a membership club. Like
that's what social belonging is, whether it's formalized as a
(38:17):
democracy or a voting precinct or not. We're all part
of many communities and we have power. Even if we're
living in an explicitly authoritarian state, we still have some
power to shape how that community operates. You know, what
we give to and what we get out of it
and the good news, you know, in terms of this
(38:37):
personal communal micro macro vibe, that I've been learning that
I had a very formal idea of citizen ing and
it's like, oh, we elect these people and we go
to community meetings and very external Megan, it's very like
the world out there is broken. Let me go with
my virgoness and my male fix it, and let's let's
(39:00):
fix it. I've identified problems. I have this brain. I'm
gonna use it to help the situation out. That's what
we need. And yeah, but also inside you know, in here,
you know, invest in relationships is one of our pillars
of what it means to citizen and the long version
(39:21):
is investing relationships with yourself with others in the planet
around you. And so in order to have a relationship
with the city council or your block committee or your
office working group, it really helps to have a relationship
with yourself. And so we can start citizening and experiencing
and practicing and benefiting from community in way more tangible,
(39:48):
close and proximate and informal ways. And that just out
of that was a relief for me. I've been I
think I've been inundated with a kind of civil education model,
which is, you know, how a bill becomes a law,
and you write Congress and you put a change dot
org petition and you you give all your money that
like Brian Stevenson for the Legacy Museum with the Lynching
(40:11):
Museum or whatever. Like you watch Black Panther all the time,
right and Blu ray and DVD and all the streaming services.
So yes, there's a lot of external stuff that we
got to do and that is aided by doing internal
stuff too, And it's just the bar of entry is
actually just it's very low. Frontline is us and that's
(40:35):
I find that very freeing and like destressing. It's like, okay,
we all we literally all have something we can do.
Speaker 2 (40:42):
Yeah right, yeah, coming it's terrifying, but it's not complicated,
yeah right, coming into relationship with yourself and practicing telling
yourself the truth and listening for that and being brave
enough to play and find joy and all of the things.
I love that you just say the frontline is in
us because this is so much of what I feel
(41:05):
like I want to talk about and am talking about.
Speaker 3 (41:09):
Like there is.
Speaker 2 (41:12):
Liberation in telling the truth about how hard it is
to be here. Sometimes there is real community to be
found when you allow what is real to be real,
and it does unlock joy and connection and community and
the change that we need to bring forth.
Speaker 1 (41:32):
There's a study that we came across in making this
season of the podcast. The season is all about how
do you create a culture of democracy? Now? How do
you change the makeup of Congress? Right? How do you
change the kind of soil that Congress emerges from? And
because they all come from somewhere, absolutely, they all come
(41:53):
from next door, right, They come from the classroom next door,
the house next door, the office next door, and so
we're we're in community with all these eventual leaders, including ourselves.
In the Conflict Resolution episodes, one with Prea Parker and
one with a group called Beyond Conflict, there's a study
that reveals that we're basically not as divided as we
(42:16):
think we are. That the way I think Republicans think
of me is far worse than what they actually think
of me, which is terrify Because'm pretty sure I don't
think too now undermining the science, But would we would
know that for ourselves if we showed up honestly in
our relationships, right, if we trusted ourselves to be ourselves
(42:40):
with each other and instead a lot of what has
happened is we've outsourced that trust and faith to mediators,
technological mediators, journalistic or allegedly journalistic mediators who have a
profit motive to convince us of something that isn't as
true as they want it to be. You know how
devastatingly and intractably divided we are, how much trash so
(43:04):
and so it thinks you are. You hear what they
said about your mama, Like that's the business model for
a lot of news media, And you believe what they
said about your mama? Who said what about my what?
Speaker 2 (43:14):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (43:14):
It's on right. And to be in real relationship doesn't
mean one of us has to interact with all eight
billion of us. That doesn't scale, but it can scale
at intermediate steps. If I'm more real with you, more
real with my partner, more real with my team and
my staff, that's a little permission structure for all those
(43:37):
people to mirror that back and be real with me
and each other and the relationships that they're a part
of that I'm not a part of. And then we
get this ripple effect. I wouldn't call it trickle down.
I'd call it kind of bubble up as a different
kind of metaphor, so that we end up creating the
environment and the culture we want. That's some of the
(43:57):
power of that authentic experience and that real experience of pain,
sometimes of anger, sometimes of joy sometimes like bring your
real some of us smother our joy too. Is inappropriate,
it's inappropriate. This is a professional.
Speaker 2 (44:14):
This is a professional and serious times we are living
in Yeah.
Speaker 1 (44:17):
Yeah, and you see, you know, and then we are
coached to perform that as evidence of leadership. Well, real
leaders I'm cracking jokes in a meeting, adding gifts to
the slack channel. Lead greholders might think you're not serious
about maximizing their value. You ran back to pillaging and destroyer,
(44:39):
right right, I should say laser focused on that. You're right, yeah,
no distraction.
Speaker 2 (44:43):
Well, and this is this is true, right, like that
we can destroy others and the environment when we otherize
them and when they aren't human and when we don't
have that limbic resonance with them to go all dorky
for a second.
Speaker 1 (44:58):
When we think of them as them. Yes, right, Well,
that thing over there, that forrest, that tree, that nation,
that person that not me is what we're saying that
that other you know, as you said, so if we
can shift that, this Valerie Corps our very first guest.
I can't talk about her enough because she set us
(45:20):
on a certain path with her book see no Stranger.
The stranger is just a part of me. I do
not yet know. That's the summary of the book. You
should still read it, but that's the basic point. And
so if we can internalize the external, then we're actually
being very selfish when we care for others. That's a neat, little,
a little semantic act. And we we are a part
(45:43):
of and that apart from so I keep I keep
bumping into this annoying lesson Megan in like different areas
of this, Like, Okay, I did a podcast about citizen
in cool, cool, cool, Yeah, we're all one. Great, And
then I've got a little men's group over here. Oh
we're all one. Here we go again, Here we go.
I'm out in the woods making them this PBS America outdoors.
(46:05):
Oh we're part of nature. Not apart from we're all one?
What's with the oneness? Who's writing these bullet points in
my project?
Speaker 2 (46:14):
I have actually in my notes this whole concept of
like we're all one. So like I'm apparently I've been
I've been conscripted to be part of your bullet pointing.
Here's but here's the thing, right, is that same topic
different tones, right, Like this is something that happens very often,
(46:36):
Like when we start talking about race and inequality and injustice,
you've got some folks being like.
Speaker 3 (46:43):
But we're all one.
Speaker 2 (46:45):
There's no difference here. We're all just can't We're all
just oh my god. Right, But there's a way that
we can talk about our interrelatedness and our interconnection as
a way of bypassing the real work that needs to
be done. And there is a way to engage with
our interrelatedness that actually makes things better.
Speaker 1 (47:07):
Thank you for that distinction, Yes.
Speaker 2 (47:10):
Yeah, because the whole we are one thing is really irritating.
Speaker 1 (47:14):
Right, But so.
Speaker 2 (47:16):
Much of what you're doing in this whole like we
are one thing. And I hear that, and I see
that theme running through in the way that you're claiming it,
and it's like there's this drive to embrace the complexity
and that you don't have this part without this part,
and you don't have the healing or the restoration of
(47:38):
this part without this relationship. And it's all about relatedness,
not about the erasure of difference.
Speaker 1 (47:47):
Absolutely, absolutely, that's it. That's it. And the people who
want to skip to the happy ending, you know, they're
just kind of like reading that last sentence on oh
we're all one cool, then I don't I don't have
to do any I don't have to do anything. That's
the bypass thing that you talked about. So, you know,
the healing where it requires acknowledgment of injury and pain,
(48:10):
and so there's some necessary sequencing of some of these steps.
I do believe they head in that same direction. I think,
you know, we've created a lot of compelling fictions for
ourselves that draw lines between us, and then we've built
powerful structures along those fictional minds to make the impacts
(48:31):
really felt. And that's the that's it's almost a paradox.
It's certainly a kind of a conundrum. You could take
it as well. Okay, race isn't scientifically real, but it's
a socially constructed thing that was based in law and
finance and physical labor and actual abuse and real blood.
So racism is that's kind of a logical slippery thing.
(48:54):
Race isn't real. How is racism real? Because we made
it real. That's the power of our mind and our
collective minds. The US dollars not real. Actually, it's just
like a collective shared delusion that's powerful enough to get
us to go to work and pay for food and housing,
right with this made up thing that has no basis
(49:18):
in like physical reality. So fiction is powerful. Things that
aren't real can make things be real. And that is
a that's a beautiful confusion and then a beautiful tension
and paradoxical thing. But I think some of the best
things in life are right, they are and they aren't
(49:39):
at the same time. It's they're they're That's kind of
a quantum thing. Keep bumping also into quantum. Stuff keeps
coming up from Sam Raider. She talks about quantum all
the time, and quantum Marvel keeps launching these quantum movies.
So from from pop culture, it's like deep you know,
emotional and psychological work. Quantum ken coming up, So there
(50:01):
must be something to it.
Speaker 3 (50:02):
There must be.
Speaker 2 (50:03):
I mean, biggest living organism in the entire world is microhizome, right,
So like that's quantum and it is all the same time, like.
Speaker 1 (50:11):
We really what is your biome telling you the.
Speaker 2 (50:15):
Visible and the invisible world? Oh my gosh, I'm not
going to keep you for the next three years here
on this sip. But like we didn't even get to
talk about like forest ecology and how that like all
of the all of the things. So I I'm going
to pull my own brain back from the radness of
quantum overlaps with everything and.
Speaker 3 (50:37):
Set us up for.
Speaker 2 (50:39):
The last complex thing that we'll discuss on our time together.
Speaker 1 (50:43):
Great, all right.
Speaker 2 (50:45):
At the end of your twenty nineteen Ted talk, now
Helen Walters ask you a question, and I'm going to
completely paraphrase here. She said, basically, there's so much ugliness
in our culture everywhere all around, and she wondered if
you had any hope and going back to what you
just said about the power of fictions that we create
and the power of stories that we create. Your answer
(51:07):
back then in twenty nineteen was about freeing ourselves from
the lies that we'd been told. And so we're sitting
here three years later. You've already talked about how things
have changed for you, about what you're willing to do
and how you're willing to show up in those three
years sense, but I want to revisit that question. Yeah,
knowing what you know, and living what you've lived, knowing
(51:29):
what's unfolded since that stage three years ago. What does
hope look like for you now?
Speaker 1 (51:36):
Hope looks like a tree. It's deeply rooted and it's
striving to grow. It's willing to change. It's not threatened
by growing a new limb or maybe losing one. It's
just this in the nature of treeness to experience all
these things. And I think there's something for me about
(52:00):
hope that it has to remain very grounded. There is
a fleeting ethereal wispy hope that you can't grab on to.
It's like smoke. I don't like that one. I think
that one's less useful. It makes for pretty words, but
maybe not much else. So I hope that's grounded. I
(52:22):
hope that grieves so that you know, at some point
it can help celebrate. That's more of my flavor. The
thing that I was feeling in that stage moment, which
is a very unscripted moment by the way, I caught
me off guard. I was like, I'm done, I'm good.
(52:42):
The fiction part that we were just talking about is
so it's it's kind of the whole thing. My hope
is grounded in our creative possibility, in our own creativity,
and we can be destructively creative, but I also think
we can be beautifully you know, hopefully creative. And so
(53:06):
when I look at when I'm grounded in the evidence
of what we've chosen to make real from our fiction,
it's pretty devastating, you know. There's there's a you could
have an indictment sheet from a grand jury for abusive
imagination by the human species and never finish reading out
that list. But there's a lot more to it, and
(53:28):
we're capable of a lot more so. Even even the
devastating things we've done to ourselves and each other is
evidence that we can create anything that we think serves
us and then follow through on it. And it's not
just a negative example. There are many positive examples of
what we have created, whether systems of government, beautiful works
(53:51):
of art, collaborative, cooperative economic things like we can use
tech differently, we can use money differently, like we can
be in relation to all of these in a way
that really serves a collective us, allows us to be
collectively selfish. So my hope is grounded in a lot
of dirt, you know, and pain, and in the knowledge
(54:13):
that ultimately we just make things up. So if we
are aware of that more, can we choose more consciously
to make up something that's better for all of us?
And I believe we can.
Speaker 3 (54:31):
That's awesome.
Speaker 2 (54:32):
It is such a joy to spend time with you.
Thank you so much for being here with me and
with us. Obviously, we're going to link to everything and
everywhere that people can find you, your Ted Talk and
your podcast in America outdoors in the show notes. Is
there anything else you want listeners to know about where
to find you.
Speaker 1 (54:50):
Yeah, I'm wherever baratun Days are found. I've been. I
don't wish I'm pretty much I'm not the only one,
but I'm like the the easiest to link to. There's
a Barton Day in Atlanta who I'm a big fan of.
I have to meet him at his new business. He
does nanotechnology stuff, he's a science He have Barretune de
(55:10):
Cola check out the other Barton Day.
Speaker 3 (55:14):
So what you're saying is you're googleable.
Speaker 1 (55:16):
I'm google doable, so find that now we're just you know,
I've been writing a lot with this new media company,
puck to at puck dot News, and that's where I'm
exploring more slowly and deeply. A lot of these themes
raise tech, democracy and our possibilities with all of that.
So if you want to have a textual experience, check
(55:39):
out what I'm up to at PUCK and what my
colleagues they are up to. I'm proud of all their reporting.
I am not a reporter, but it's good to be
in the company of people who really really do that
job while I get to opine on things and process
my emotions and feelings through words on a screen. This
has been I feel like I need a nap. This
(56:01):
has been an experience that is so beautiful. It's been
this really like heart forward, heart open journey. Thank you
for inviting me into what feels like kind of a
sacred space here, and then for what you're doing to
help us all be okay with not being okay and
to explore our relationship with grief and with hope. Appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (56:22):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (56:24):
All right, everybody, stay tuned. I'll be right back with
your questions to carry with you right after this. Each
week I leave you with some questions to carry with
you until we meet again. You know what really struck
(56:45):
me through this entire conversation with Baritunde was how easy
it was, how easy it was to weave through all
the different topics and aspects of life. We discussed, like
there's something in that for me that when you're living
this stuff, when both joy and mourning or celebration and grief,
when both of those things are welcomed and acknowledged in
(57:06):
your life, it's just like it's easy to move back
and forth between them. Being okay is normal. There's no
need to like set aside a special scheduled time to
like talk about heavy discussions about like you don't have
to do that stuff. When you have relationships where everything
is welcome, you just do it. You talk about what's
(57:28):
there when it's there, and it's so.
Speaker 3 (57:32):
Easy.
Speaker 2 (57:34):
This whole conversation made me feel really hopeful about the
joy that I stitch into my life, that there's joy
in building relationships and friendships that include everything whatever is
up at any given moment. It also really stressed the
importance of play, which is something that I full disclosure,
often forget to prioritize in my own life. And I
(57:55):
love what Baratunde said about his hope being bound with
the human power of creatingivity, Like, how can we not
have hope knowing what's in our power to create?
Speaker 3 (58:06):
That's a really interesting idea. What about you?
Speaker 2 (58:10):
What's stuck with you from this conversation. Everybody's going to
take something different from the show, but I do hope
you found something to hold on to. If you want
to tell me how today's show felt for you, or
you have thoughts about what we covered, let me know.
Tag at Refuge in Grief on all the social platforms
so I can hear how this conversation affected you. You
(58:31):
can follow the show at It's Okaypod on TikTok and
Refuge in Grief everywhere else to see video clips from
the show. Also use the hashtag It's okaypod on all
of the platforms. Not only so that I can find
you when I go looking, and I totally do search
that hashtag so I can see what you're talking about,
but use that hashtag so that other people can find
(58:51):
you too. It's a really cool way to start building
conversations and community. None of us are entirely okay, and
it's time we start talking about that together. Hashtag's just
one tool in building.
Speaker 3 (59:06):
The world that we want.
Speaker 2 (59:08):
Yeah, it's okay that you're not okay, You're in good company.
That's it for this week, friends, Remember to subscribe to
the show and leave a review. Your reviews help make
the show easier to find, which furthers our mission of
getting more people to have interesting conversations about difficult things.
And your reviews are really special to me and I.
Speaker 3 (59:30):
Love to read them.
Speaker 2 (59:32):
Coming up next week, musician and author Sarah Raimi joins
me to talk about chronic illness and why having your
music show up at a hit TV series is a
mixed bag of awesome and exhausting. Follow the show on
your favorite platforms, friends, so you don't miss an episode.
Want more on these topics, Look, grief is everywhere. As
(59:54):
my dad says, daily life is full of everyday grief
that we don't call grief. Learning how to talk about
this stuff without cliches or platitudes or simplistic dismissive statements
is an important skill for everyone. Whether you're trying to
support a friend going through a hard time, or you
work in the helping professions, or you just want to
be better at human ing. Get help to have those
(01:00:16):
conversations with trainings, professional resources, and my best selling book
It's Okay that You're Not Okay, plus The Guided Journal
for Grief at Megandivine dot Co. It's Okay that You're
Not Okay. That podcast is written and produced by me
Megan Divine. Executive producer is Amy Brown, co produced by
Elizabeth Fozzio, Logistical and social media support from Micah, Post
(01:00:40):
production and editing by the ever patient Houston Tilly. Music
provided by Wavecrash, and today's background noise provided by the
Endless Spring Drone of chainsaws cleaning up after the La
Winter rains
I'm wired for optimism and possibility. I'm predisposed to a
positive interpretation of the world around me, and some of
that is genetic, some of that is probably biochemical, and
some of that is survival.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
This is it's okay that you're not okay, and I'm
your host, Megan Divine. This week on the show, author speaker,
podcast and television host Baritunde Thurston joins me to talk
about grief and joy, and investing in relationships and the
subversive nature of play, Settle in Everybody. All of that
and more coming up right after this first break before
(00:45):
we get started.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
Two quick notes.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
One, this episode is an encore performance. I am on
break working on a giant new project, so we're releasing
a mix of our favorite episodes from the first three
seasons of the show. Some of these conversations you might
have missed in your original seasons, and some shows just
truly deserve multiple listens so that you capture all of
the goodness. Second note, while we cover a lot of emotional,
(01:11):
relational territory and our time here together, this show is
not a substitute for skilled support with a license mental
health provider or for professional supervision related to your work,
take what you learn here, take your thoughts and your
reflections out into your world and talk about it. Hey, friends,
there's so much to celebrate and there's so much to mourn.
(01:33):
With this week's guest, Baritundae Thurston, this week's episode is
so stacked with joy and silliness. I cannot wait for
you to hear it now. This week's episode also talks
about pain, with grief stemming from personal losses and racial violence,
and generational grief, grief over the changing planet, and I
can't wait for you to hear that either. Baritunda is
(01:56):
an Emmy nominated storyteller and producer, operating, as he says,
at the intersection of race, tech, democracy, and climate. He's
the host of the PBS television series America Outdoors with
Barratundi Thurston, creator and host of the podcast Had a
Citizen with Barratunde, and a founding partner of the new
media startup Puck. His comedic memoir How to Be Black
(02:17):
as a New York Times bestseller, and in twenty nineteen,
he delivered what MSNBC's Brian Williams called one of the
greatest Ted Talks of all time. Baratunde is also really
funny and kind and thoughtful and totally willing to explore
topics a lot of people would probably like to avoid
(02:40):
if they were given the chance. Nobody's given the chance
to avoid this stuff when they're hanging out with me.
But some of the things that we discussed in our
time together, Marratunde's father died when he was a child,
and we talked about how that didn't seem like a
big deal when he was a kid, which is really
interesting for a number of reasons, but one of them
(03:01):
is that he's the second or third guest this season
to have a parent die in their childhood, and they
didn't really realize that there was grief involved there until
much later in their lives. We talked about how he
learned that there was grief there by getting emotional when
he saw his friends being good parents to their own kids.
Also fascinating, there's so much grief we don't recognize if
(03:21):
we're not looking for it right. It's fascinating to know
also that I am not the only one who feels
sadness well up in me when I see somebody being
kind to someone else, Like even if I am completely
not involved in the thing, Like, seeing somebody be kind
and amazing is really emotional for me. So if that's
you to the whole, somebody being kind makes me a
(03:44):
weepy thing. You are not alone in that baratunde, He's
with you.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
I'm with you. We also talked about the.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
Kind of more obvious in your face grief, the constant
news cycles of black men and black boys being killed,
what it's like seeing people who look like you suffering
and being harmed on a regular basis. We talked about
what it's like living in a world where you can
be killed for just existing. And we had this really
(04:13):
cool conversation about getting to decide what you look at like,
how you see yourself and the people who look like
you being portrayed. What images do you consume? Are you
like consuming only painful images? What else is in there?
That led us into a slightly subversive conversation about play
and joy and the healing power of community.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
We talked about a lot of stuff.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
I found this conversation to be so nourishing, so life
affirming in the face of cascading pain and losses personally
and collectively. There's so much bad news in this world.
I don't know if you've noticed, we don't like need
a distraction from the bad news. We have things we
really do need to face, but we might need to
(04:59):
find find ways to let more joy exist alongside all
that pain. As you'll hear Baratunde say when we get
into his hope for the future, there's a lot of
power and potential in our human creativity. So if you've
ever wondered how to create a life that includes both
grief and joy, or wondered if that's even possible, this
episode is for you. Here's my conversation with the excellent
(05:23):
Baritunde Thurston.
Speaker 3 (05:27):
Baraituni.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
I am so glad to have you here with me today.
There are so many places that we could begin our conversation,
But I was telling you before we started ruling that
I've been like living in your collected works for the
last couple of days, and there's just there's so much
joy in what you do and how you show up
(05:49):
in the world, even when so much of what you're covering,
what you're discussing, what you're getting into is really serious
and really painful, and I just like, I feel like
there's this combination of celebration and grieving threading through all
of your work. Does that feel am I accurate?
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Grief and celebration is a really accurate way to encapsulate
the wide range of things I'm up to. You know,
I write about my host shows about I talk about
race and technology and democracy, really easy stuff that always
brings people joy.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
Megan bringing the joy.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
They can be very heavy, and there is a lot
to mourn, you know. There's a lot to mourn with
our planet and with our relationship to nature. There's a
lot to mourn with the racial history in the United
States and our unwillingness to integrate it as a full
part of our whole history, but instead try to like
pretend it didn't happen, which just makes it fester and
(06:51):
come out sideways. There's a lot to mourn in our
loss of ritual and habit and tradition. Because things are
changing so quickly within a single generation, we are losing
touch with ourselves. We had millennia, at least hundreds of
years where a great great grandparent had the same life
as their great great grandchild, and now an older sibling
(07:13):
and a younger sibling are speaking different languages. That's worth acknowledging.
The loss of pattern and legacy in that, and we're
up to some dope things, you know, we still have
We always have a chance to create something new. I
(07:35):
think we have a better shot at it if we
acknowledge the loss as opposed to pretend this death didn't happen.
But it's not the end. Loss is not the end.
Death is not the end. There's a cycle to all
of this, and so I get self motivated by remembering
the cycle and trying not to get stuck in any
(07:59):
particular piece of it, especially the grieving part of it.
No one has encapsulated or tried to summarize what I
do as that as grieving and celebrating, and it's this
duality that I've carried for a long time. So thanks
for seeing that.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
Yeah, I mean that's part of my lens on the world,
right Like that is that is how I see all
of that. I love that you brought up acknowledgment, right that.
For me, the entire thing here is to acknowledge what's
real and tell the truth about how hard it is
to be here sometimes tell the truth about really difficult
things I don't always go with, so that we can
(08:39):
celebrate because there can be something kind of transactional in
that for me. And again I come back to like
the cadence in the way that you speak about things,
the pacing with which you speak about things.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
I never got that sense from.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
You in listening to your TED talks or your podcast
or reading your writing. I never got the sense that
you were acknowledging so that you could move past, but
that there was a twinning.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
Yeah. I mean, if anything, my practice of acknowledgment has
deepened over the past few years. So I'm wired for
optimism and possibility. I'm predisposed to a positive interpretation of
the world around me. And some of that is genetic,
some of that is probably biochemical, and some of that
(09:26):
is survival. And you know, when faced with a certain challenge,
you know, you can see it play out in my
patterns with my wife. She might bring up something uncomfortable
and I'll try to flip it to the pie We're good.
And I don't do that so much anymore. I think
for a long time I didn't trust existing in the grief,
(09:49):
and you know, and if I did, it was intuitive,
but not a self aware choice. It's increasingly a choice
to kind of sit with the pain, the discomfort the
loss of the morning and try to even be grateful
for that feeling. You know, it's such a human feeling
(10:10):
and and to your point, not too quickly try to
transact out of it. Oh aheah, I did. I did
my grieving things today. That was five minutes agrieving and
now I kind of sadness.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
The day I got this.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
Yeah, now now we got this, but the rest and
that's not true or real or honest or ultimately useful.
So I don't think I've been escaping it, certainly not publicly.
But you mentioned the TED talk that talk about deconstructing racism,
and I wove in personal story, which was a choice
(10:45):
encouraged by others. I had a stellar, clever, smart, funny
talk with a bit of anger prepared about racism. I
was good to go, and my wife was like, you
can go deeper. And actually one of the people at
TED kind of nudged me. Get more personal, get more vulnerable,
(11:08):
since there's more there, what's going on there. So I
had these two women in my life who were encouraging
me to not race through, and the final version of it,
I didn't. I paced it, I sat with it, I
slowed it down, and it was much more powerful for me.
(11:29):
And when I left that stage, which people didn't see
as I exploded into tears, just absolutely a release physical
and emotional, and that was a sign for me of
how like real that moment was.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
Yeah, it is such a push, right, Like I know
this as a fellow speaker, and how those talk whisperers
are like, no, you have to you have to bring
your heart to the stage otherwise this won't reach other
people's home arts. And that's difficult. It's difficult on a
lot of different levels. But I think like we well,
(12:06):
I don't want to answer I don't want to answer
this question. I want to ask this question, like I
want to talk about like role models in grief and
grief in the black community, and grief for men, and
grief for the age in which you came up, and
like I think all of that can sort of be
covered by a question like what has been your relationship
(12:29):
with grief, you know, coming from your childhood experiences and
then up through and and where you sit with it now.
I know that's a really big, like dense, dark matter
kind of question which we could take like five, we
could do an entire like series on just answering that question.
But I if I ask you that, like, how has
(12:50):
your relationship with grief changed over the decades, bringing in
all you know about role models and what is safe
and what is not safe to share with yourself or
share publicly.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
Yeah, when I was seven or eight. I really should
fact check the timeline. I'm always thinking I'm seven or
eight and there is a there's a noble there's a
noble date here, but I don't know what this second.
When I was young, my father was killed. He was shot.
It was in the middle of the night. Maybe it
(13:27):
was a robbery. No one was ever found for it.
I remember getting the news from my mother, who was
living separately from him at the time, so I lived
with her and occasionally saw him, and I didn't know
him that well. He was like, he was the father
you're supposed to it is your dad. And I was
given the option of going to the funeral, and I
(13:49):
was like, now, I'm good. I don't looking at a
dead body does not feel like a good time to
this child. I will pass And I cried and I
felt sad, and then I just kind of closed the
door and I lost contact with his family. So I
just had my mom and my sister, my older sister
helping bring me up. And I thought, when I thought
(14:13):
about him, I think I'm good here right like I'm
I'm supposed to be sad or lost my father. I
also know things about him that make it more complicated.
You know, he had a lot of demons and they
showed up in some nasty ways, and I missed exposure
to a lot of that. And whatever supposed to happen
(14:34):
in my life is happening. So I'm grateful for the
life I have and this mom. She loves me, and
I'm healthy, and I've gone to college, and I've got
jobs and paying back loans and falling in love and
just living. And I had not really dealt with his death.
I'd never fully grieved. I grieved my mother's death more
(14:55):
when she died in two thousand and five. That hit
me months later, almost a year, got knocked on my ass.
And I'm still processing her loss because she represented so much.
She was both parents and a village at times, and
with my father, I found myself on this journey prompted
(15:16):
by the universe to reconnect with that grief. A cousin
found me on Facebook. I saw you on TV. I
think I'm your cousin, Like every black person thinks I'm
your cousin when they see me on TV. This is
not special. But she had the paperwork to prove it.
She had the long form birth certificate. She had photos
of me when I was a baby, and I was like,
I know what I look like. I was super cute.
(15:37):
That's me. Those are my cheeks, you know. So that
begeans a relationship with my father's mother, also known as
my grandmother, who I had totally lost touch with. With
his brother and but most importantly, with a version of him.
I started like having these conversations and moments and angry tirades,
(16:00):
just stuff I clearly needed to get off my chest.
And the evolution continued. I'm a part of a men's group.
As a group of black men, we kind of we
hold each other. We hold each other up, we hold
each other accountable, we hold each other emotionally. I've never
had anything like this in my life see dead father above.
So I'm in this circle with many men who are fathers,
(16:25):
and I'm finding I'm getting so emotional about something about them, like, oh,
you're being a dad. I don't know what that's like
and I'm low key jealous, and I'm also like feeding
off of their fatherhood energy that was completely missing from
my construction, from my experience. And I've grieved that, you know,
(16:49):
you can grieve. I've grieved the person. I've grieved the
missed opportunities. I've grieved the the inability for the person
who was my father to heal himself from all the
things that ailed him and caused him to ail others.
That's very much a journey from you know, the kid
who didn't want to go to the funeral and thought
(17:12):
he was okay until thirties. I'm forty five now and
still adjusting that relationship with grief. That's one version of
an answer to your prompt and your question. So as
distant as my relationship with grief was as a child,
there was another example which made it very close, and
(17:34):
it was an example of collective grief. I was at
this private school in DC starting in seventh grade. Sidwell
Friends School is pretty famous now, small black community of
students and parents. My mother is a member of the
Parents of Black Students organization. Organize a gathering like a meeting,
like a little revolutionary sleeper cell meeting that's what you
(17:56):
know we do in white schools. And we were She
organized us into a circle and we all closed our eyes,
and she had us imagine that we were in the
bowels of a ship being brought here and just to
(18:18):
feel what does that feel like? What are you hearing?
What are you sensing? Can we feel gratitude for those
people who made it through that journey so that we
could be here on this stage, in this meeting room wherever,
and she asked us to mourn. There's so much of
(18:40):
the black experience here that is about persevering, making a
way out of no way. There are literally thousands of
songs that channel the same energy, resonate at pretty much
the same frequency of like just getting through it and
not pausing to acknowledge it. And that was a really
(19:07):
early modeling for me of the power of pausing, of
collectively mourning and grieving and acknowledging the hurt and the pain.
There's there's a lot of racial movement education stuff which
is trying to get like white people to acknowledge and
get men to acknowledge what they've done to women. There's
(19:28):
all kinds like in the power Dynamic, get the powerful
quote unquote to admit or acknowledge. But we all have
a version of that. And I think there's a lot
of you know, experience in the black community that's like
I don't want to I don't want to touch that.
That's too painful, that connects too many dots. I don't
want to see that picture. And it's really hard. It's
(19:53):
really hard to do it to like sit still with it,
and then I breathe through it and shed the tears
and then find hopefully through the other side of it,
ways and reasons to keep going. The duality I'm holding
right now is I'm pretty exhausted of the struggle and
(20:14):
pain story. I'm exhausted of the like convinced white people
to be better humans so that I can be human story.
And so I'm you know, looking at other joyful, hopeful
ways of being that don't require waiting for someone else
(20:35):
or accepting as the main narrative suffering. That just doesn't
it doesn't fit me anymore. And so our acknowledgment and
evolution transcendence parallel paths to freedom like joy and silliness.
That's also really, really really important to me.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
Increasingly, you know, I think about your writing about the
killing of unarmed black men and black boys.
Speaker 3 (21:06):
I think about the.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
Rage and the grief and the morning you've written America
is addicted to watching me die, to watching itself die.
And as I was getting ready for our conversation today,
I was like, there's a reason why I started with
your joy when we are talking about what it's like
(21:29):
to be black in this community, and I'm saying, this
is a white person who doesn't fucking know anything about it,
But like there is this like relentless narrative of pain
and suffering, and you have to fight to not be
only identified as that, yeah, which is just like Hello,
it's already exhausting to stay alive in a system that
(21:52):
keeps trying to make you dead and hold you down
and hold you back, And we also have to fight
this hard to have joy, to access joy, and that
that joy and joy is really hard won, right, Like
we prize resilience, right instead of addressing the systems that
force you to be resilient, right, I mean, it's just
(22:14):
such a it's just such trash, And to be able
to ferociously hold onto joy is such a powerful thing,
you know, Like I can talk myself in circles on
this one. But I think that there's there's also something
in what you said that leaving the white folks aside
for a moment, Like it's it's hard to get people
(22:37):
to continue to hold their gaze on how much pain
and suffering there is, right Like seeing black men die
over and over and over again on the news, seeing
black trans women die over and over and over again
on the news, seeing high maternal death rates for black women,
like it's just fucking relentless and touching the grief of that, Like,
(23:03):
I get it that people don't want to touch that.
We don't want to touch grief in general, right, Like
we don't want to talk about any kind of grief.
And you start to get into the complex systems of
grief and the overwhelming grief and the preventable grief, and
it just sort of fries the circuits. Is there a
(23:26):
way that you have found to not do the transactional
joy to celebration thing, but to speak into that grief
and that anger in a way that feels like it
it does the grief justice in a way.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
When I do public speaking since COVID, during COVID, during
my public talks during COVID, I dropped a lot of
my put on diplomacy. I'm a natural peacemaker. I was
in my family as a kid. I helped my mom
negotiate with an angry motorist or neighbor, or I'd write
(24:09):
letters on behalf, you know, to try to get through
some challenge in a peaceful, diplomatic, positive way. And so
I'm the family diplomat, and I've worked in school in
certain circumstances, and that's just I honed that for a while.
I thought, Oh, this is just who I am. I'm
just this naturally positive person, and that's a part of
(24:31):
the story. I also think there's a part of it
which is like, for me to show real rage and anger,
it can be threatening to people and become a threat
to myself. So I have to manage those weightier emotions,
those more volatile parts of myself, because that's just a
story that I've seen too many times. He was in
(24:53):
a rage, he was coming right for me. He looked threatening.
He reached suddenly. I was like, I'm not reaching for nothing.
I staple my driver's license to my forehead when I
drive now it's a little special holder in the baseball cap.
It's great. So you know, this is a reasonable solution
to an unreasonable problem. Just baseball cap visors for your
license and registration, pre shipped to all people of color.
(25:16):
I found during COVID I locked. I lost the ability
to maintain that diplomatic air, and I just let more
of the anger show. There's a there's a physical kind
of metaphor for this. When most of my presentations pre COVID,
I had amazing slides, Megan, I'm so good at like
(25:38):
PowerPoint keynote I have. I could just work. Give me
like some giddy images, a little bit of photoshop, my
font selection, you know, good San Sarah font like, oh
let's go, let's crush this. And part of the show,
even the Ted talk we mentioned that's a slide show.
That is aid show there is. It's timed, this color coded.
It's almost a game. And I was really prided myself
(26:01):
on that. That's also a shield, you know, And so
I put that down. I don't use slides anymore. Now
that we're back in person doing live events, they're like,
what do you need for AV Just a microphone and
light and a backup mic in case something goes wrong,
that's all. Maybe a chair if I get tired or
want to strut around or lean on it with a
(26:23):
smooth affect. Yeah, a little prop But I was not
one prior to let anger into my talks. I let
it flow. Now it comes across in my writing much more.
My way of not transacting through to get to the
joy is to like fully experience the grief, the morning,
(26:47):
the anger, the rage, and communicate it much more than
I'm used to. I've got to let it out when
it's when I hold it in, when I suppress it
with a perfectly timed in place but not heartfelt bit
of humor. Oh look at everything. Okay, my voice goes
up on the black of it is re all fine.
(27:08):
That's a that's a telltale sign. I have learned the
physical tells of myself. When am I holding back and
I'm with my partner Elizabeth, you know she I am
blessed and cursed with a partner who has an incredible radar,
incredibly emotional radar, so she knows when I'm not being
fully forthcoming, like there's no faking it till you make
(27:29):
it with her. Which is a real problem, man, real
Like you gotta be able to keep some stuff from
your part not like you know crimes. I'm just like,
just bake, did you buy the thing? Yeah? I was
going on, Oh man, she do. So I've got more
reps in in practice and my most you know, intimate
(27:51):
and close relationship with what happens when I open that door,
and it's it's harder and it's better, right, I won't.
It's just it's not like, oh yeah, I just I
experienced my grief now and all of my darker emotions
and life's great. You know, like every moment is just
that's not the story. It is not a quick fix.
(28:14):
This is nothing but going through the experience. It just
increasingly feels like me, like the right thing, and then
you know, I can seek out other types of experiences.
There's this thing flying around black men frolicking stilly is
(28:38):
TikTok Instagram reels. I don't know who started it, but
it's just you know, dudes holding up the selfie cam
their arm as selfie stick, running through fields like, oh
we frolicking. I didn't they tell me we was frolicking.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
Yo.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
And one of I have this this brother, our Juna O'Neil.
He's a coach and men's leadership counselor and I've been
working with him and becoming friends with him at the
same time, and he shared this with me and he
did a video. I'm like, I want to frolic. This
is amazing. We never see men frolicking, right, We're not
(29:17):
supposed to. Like frolicking is what girls do or children
or these like weaker beings that we crush in our
minds because we don't want to be anything like that
about men's business, which is stoicism and pain and suppressed
human experiences. That's what it is to be a man,
to let your inner child run rampant through your adult
(29:40):
life because you know no one modeled for us how
to deal with these things except through maybe violence or
alcohol or some other substances or just deep, deep silence.
So I really kind of experience those joyful moments more
fully when I'm myself have gone through the mournful moments too.
Speaker 2 (30:02):
Yeah, there's something about finding ways to be real like
that with yourself, with people with whom you feel trust,
who who can be trusted with that depth, right, and
then being able to bring more of that self out
into the world.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
Right.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
It's like it's not the math equation of like feel
the pain go get your joy. It's more the more
you come into relationship with what is true and real
for you and find ways to communicate and connect inside that,
the more of everything becomes available. Right, And you mentioned
(30:45):
like I love that frolicking TikTok.
Speaker 3 (30:47):
It's awesome.
Speaker 2 (30:47):
I will link to it everybody. But like there is
something dangerous in being playful or something not allowed subversive, subversive.
Speaker 3 (30:57):
In being playful.
Speaker 2 (30:59):
And you know, you think like, oh, it's easy, like
just go do this and this, but like we were
talking like decades, centuries of so many things that say
exactly how you described it, right, Like play is weak.
Joy is weak, and it takes a lot of strength
and trust to play with other grown ups.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
Yeah, it does. That's a good one. That's a really
good one. I remember a poster from maybe the nineties.
Everything I needed to know I learned in kindergarten.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
Oh right, Oh my gosh, Yeah something was that guy's name.
Oh I'm gonna have to go look it up. But yeah,
we're both like, where is it in the brain library?
Everything I needed to know I learned in kindergarten. It's
about like sharing and taking turns and like not wiping
your nose.
Speaker 3 (31:48):
On your sleeve, all all of that.
Speaker 2 (31:51):
Stuff, But there is, like there is there is something
very scary about joy and very scary about play. And
if there is anything transactional in exploring the depth of
emotions or the truth of emotions, it's that you know,
the more you come into connection and relationship with yourself
(32:13):
in that stuff, the more you can come into relationship
with that stuff in others. Absolutely, And I think like
this this sort of also brings us to again listening
to your collected works and reading you and listening to
your podcasts and watching your talks, like not only does
joy and celebration weave through so much of who you
are and how you show up, but also community as
(32:38):
restorative medicine, as necessary medicine for surviving what needs to
be survived. So if we bring community into this, I
feel like that's a nice dovetail from being safe enough
to play with grown ups? Like, Yeah, where does community
come into all of this conversation?
Speaker 3 (32:54):
For you?
Speaker 1 (32:56):
As yearning and longing in part as I'm still relatively
mobile in my life and I'm feeling needs to root
more dig into where I live as urgency given age
and the steady realization like oh, there may be some
(33:17):
maybe less time ahead than behind, like that kind of moment.
I will live to one hundred and thirty. But if
I'm keeping myself in the range of regular mortality, then
you know, forty five is a good time to start
thinking about that kind of stuff. And you know, who
do I love? Who am I spending time with? Like
who's my chosen community? Whose emails I'm going to read first?
(33:39):
You know, like this could be my last email.
Speaker 3 (33:44):
I can sense the overthinking.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
Yeah, okay, all right, so maybe I shouldn't be reading email.
I think I'm just appreciating the specialness of trusted community.
Increasing This Black men's group I'm a part of has
been so healing and beautiful. To have a community of
(34:08):
fellow men who are being emotionally open with each other,
really open, who are nudging each other toward that vulnerability.
I'll bring that challenge your face into the group. There's
some things we cannot do alone, and most things worth
doing we probably you know, shouldn't do alone. There's just more,
(34:32):
literally more with others, and we can share burdens, and
there's a lot of practical values to having other people around.
So yeah, I think I'm becoming more conscious and more
actively aware of like why I'm drawn to people, what
groups of people in community kind of bring out in me?
(34:53):
And there's a magic and an alchemy in a community
setting of being there for each other in different ways,
in different moments, and becoming one through the group, like
a forest does. Everything is everything and then we're just
(35:13):
trees with thumbs and you know, more selfish and tendencies.
But the idea that these trees have this you know,
underground root system and they hook each other up and
one is low on nutrients and one is diseased and
transmit information back and forth through fungi. Maybe like community
is a life thing, right, It's not just a human
(35:37):
human thing. And so I just I'm in awe of that.
I love it. It makes me want to be a better
community member and be more intentional with like who I'm
in community with and what am I doing? What am
I bringing to you know, community, what am I offering
to a community? Which is and in a non transactional sense, right,
(35:59):
just for the relationship value. You know that our men's
group is not a finance group. We're not like investigating
each other's come that might happen at some point but
that's not the goal. It's just to be in relationship.
And that's so it's a real prerequisite, I think, for
a whole life.
Speaker 2 (36:26):
Hey, before we get back to my conversation with Baritunde
thirst And, I want to tell you about a new
way to get answers to your questions about grief. Each month,
every month, I host a live video call in Q
and a session just for patrons. If you've ever want
us to know if what you're feeling is normal, come
ask me. If you want to know how to have
that conversation with your nosy relative who keeps butting into
(36:49):
your business with their ideas about what your loss or
your experience should look like, come join us. I'll help
you figure out how to communicate a boundary where there
needs to be a boundary once a month, every month,
if you've ever wished you could talk to me directly
and get your questions answered, this is by far the
easiest way to do it. All of the information is
(37:10):
at patreon dot com, backslash Megan Divine, or you could
find the link in the show notes. I hope to
see you there this month. All right, let's get back
to my conversation with author, speaker, television host, ridiculously awesome
human being Marratunde Thurston. We have this pacing in our
conversation today of like personal collective, personal collective, personal collective
(37:32):
which I love. I love a micro macro pacing here,
and a lot of what you're talking about in your
own personal community building. That's part of how to citizen, right,
is how do we become.
Speaker 3 (37:46):
A true collective culture.
Speaker 2 (37:48):
How do we show up in our local communities, how
do we show up in the larger world?
Speaker 1 (37:53):
Right, there's something and the good the you know, citizen
as a verb is our whole thing, and you can't
citizen alone. It's antithetical to the idea of being a
member of society and being in a membership club. Like
that's what social belonging is, whether it's formalized as a
(38:17):
democracy or a voting precinct or not. We're all part
of many communities and we have power. Even if we're
living in an explicitly authoritarian state, we still have some
power to shape how that community operates. You know, what
we give to and what we get out of it
and the good news, you know, in terms of this
(38:37):
personal communal micro macro vibe, that I've been learning that
I had a very formal idea of citizen ing and
it's like, oh, we elect these people and we go
to community meetings and very external Megan, it's very like
the world out there is broken. Let me go with
my virgoness and my male fix it, and let's let's
(39:00):
fix it. I've identified problems. I have this brain. I'm
gonna use it to help the situation out. That's what
we need. And yeah, but also inside you know, in here,
you know, invest in relationships is one of our pillars
of what it means to citizen and the long version
(39:21):
is investing relationships with yourself with others in the planet
around you. And so in order to have a relationship
with the city council or your block committee or your
office working group, it really helps to have a relationship
with yourself. And so we can start citizening and experiencing
and practicing and benefiting from community in way more tangible,
(39:48):
close and proximate and informal ways. And that just out
of that was a relief for me. I've been I
think I've been inundated with a kind of civil education model,
which is, you know, how a bill becomes a law,
and you write Congress and you put a change dot
org petition and you you give all your money that
like Brian Stevenson for the Legacy Museum with the Lynching
(40:11):
Museum or whatever. Like you watch Black Panther all the time,
right and Blu ray and DVD and all the streaming services.
So yes, there's a lot of external stuff that we
got to do and that is aided by doing internal
stuff too, And it's just the bar of entry is
actually just it's very low. Frontline is us and that's
(40:35):
I find that very freeing and like destressing. It's like, okay,
we all we literally all have something we can do.
Speaker 2 (40:42):
Yeah right, yeah, coming it's terrifying, but it's not complicated,
yeah right, coming into relationship with yourself and practicing telling
yourself the truth and listening for that and being brave
enough to play and find joy and all of the things.
I love that you just say the frontline is in
us because this is so much of what I feel
(41:05):
like I want to talk about and am talking about.
Speaker 3 (41:09):
Like there is.
Speaker 2 (41:12):
Liberation in telling the truth about how hard it is
to be here. Sometimes there is real community to be
found when you allow what is real to be real,
and it does unlock joy and connection and community and
the change that we need to bring forth.
Speaker 1 (41:32):
There's a study that we came across in making this
season of the podcast. The season is all about how
do you create a culture of democracy? Now? How do
you change the makeup of Congress? Right? How do you
change the kind of soil that Congress emerges from? And
because they all come from somewhere, absolutely, they all come
(41:53):
from next door, right, They come from the classroom next door,
the house next door, the office next door, and so
we're we're in community with all these eventual leaders, including ourselves.
In the Conflict Resolution episodes, one with Prea Parker and
one with a group called Beyond Conflict, there's a study
that reveals that we're basically not as divided as we
(42:16):
think we are. That the way I think Republicans think
of me is far worse than what they actually think
of me, which is terrify Because'm pretty sure I don't
think too now undermining the science, But would we would
know that for ourselves if we showed up honestly in
our relationships, right, if we trusted ourselves to be ourselves
(42:40):
with each other and instead a lot of what has
happened is we've outsourced that trust and faith to mediators,
technological mediators, journalistic or allegedly journalistic mediators who have a
profit motive to convince us of something that isn't as
true as they want it to be. You know how
devastatingly and intractably divided we are, how much trash so
(43:04):
and so it thinks you are. You hear what they
said about your mama, Like that's the business model for
a lot of news media, And you believe what they
said about your mama? Who said what about my what?
Speaker 2 (43:14):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (43:14):
It's on right. And to be in real relationship doesn't
mean one of us has to interact with all eight
billion of us. That doesn't scale, but it can scale
at intermediate steps. If I'm more real with you, more
real with my partner, more real with my team and
my staff, that's a little permission structure for all those
(43:37):
people to mirror that back and be real with me
and each other and the relationships that they're a part
of that I'm not a part of. And then we
get this ripple effect. I wouldn't call it trickle down.
I'd call it kind of bubble up as a different
kind of metaphor, so that we end up creating the
environment and the culture we want. That's some of the
(43:57):
power of that authentic experience and that real experience of pain,
sometimes of anger, sometimes of joy sometimes like bring your
real some of us smother our joy too. Is inappropriate,
it's inappropriate. This is a professional.
Speaker 2 (44:14):
This is a professional and serious times we are living
in Yeah.
Speaker 1 (44:17):
Yeah, and you see, you know, and then we are
coached to perform that as evidence of leadership. Well, real
leaders I'm cracking jokes in a meeting, adding gifts to
the slack channel. Lead greholders might think you're not serious
about maximizing their value. You ran back to pillaging and destroyer,
(44:39):
right right, I should say laser focused on that. You're right, yeah,
no distraction.
Speaker 2 (44:43):
Well, and this is this is true, right, like that
we can destroy others and the environment when we otherize
them and when they aren't human and when we don't
have that limbic resonance with them to go all dorky
for a second.
Speaker 1 (44:58):
When we think of them as them. Yes, right, Well,
that thing over there, that forrest, that tree, that nation,
that person that not me is what we're saying that
that other you know, as you said, so if we
can shift that, this Valerie Corps our very first guest.
I can't talk about her enough because she set us
(45:20):
on a certain path with her book see no Stranger.
The stranger is just a part of me. I do
not yet know. That's the summary of the book. You
should still read it, but that's the basic point. And
so if we can internalize the external, then we're actually
being very selfish when we care for others. That's a neat, little,
a little semantic act. And we we are a part
(45:43):
of and that apart from so I keep I keep
bumping into this annoying lesson Megan in like different areas
of this, Like, Okay, I did a podcast about citizen
in cool, cool, cool, Yeah, we're all one. Great, And
then I've got a little men's group over here. Oh
we're all one. Here we go again, Here we go.
I'm out in the woods making them this PBS America outdoors.
(46:05):
Oh we're part of nature. Not apart from we're all one?
What's with the oneness? Who's writing these bullet points in
my project?
Speaker 2 (46:14):
I have actually in my notes this whole concept of
like we're all one. So like I'm apparently I've been
I've been conscripted to be part of your bullet pointing.
Here's but here's the thing, right, is that same topic
different tones, right, Like this is something that happens very often,
(46:36):
Like when we start talking about race and inequality and injustice,
you've got some folks being like.
Speaker 3 (46:43):
But we're all one.
Speaker 2 (46:45):
There's no difference here. We're all just can't We're all
just oh my god. Right, But there's a way that
we can talk about our interrelatedness and our interconnection as
a way of bypassing the real work that needs to
be done. And there is a way to engage with
our interrelatedness that actually makes things better.
Speaker 1 (47:07):
Thank you for that distinction, Yes.
Speaker 2 (47:10):
Yeah, because the whole we are one thing is really irritating.
Speaker 1 (47:14):
Right, But so.
Speaker 2 (47:16):
Much of what you're doing in this whole like we
are one thing. And I hear that, and I see
that theme running through in the way that you're claiming it,
and it's like there's this drive to embrace the complexity
and that you don't have this part without this part,
and you don't have the healing or the restoration of
(47:38):
this part without this relationship. And it's all about relatedness,
not about the erasure of difference.
Speaker 1 (47:47):
Absolutely, absolutely, that's it. That's it. And the people who
want to skip to the happy ending, you know, they're
just kind of like reading that last sentence on oh
we're all one cool, then I don't I don't have
to do any I don't have to do anything. That's
the bypass thing that you talked about. So, you know,
the healing where it requires acknowledgment of injury and pain,
(48:10):
and so there's some necessary sequencing of some of these steps.
I do believe they head in that same direction. I think,
you know, we've created a lot of compelling fictions for
ourselves that draw lines between us, and then we've built
powerful structures along those fictional minds to make the impacts
(48:31):
really felt. And that's the that's it's almost a paradox.
It's certainly a kind of a conundrum. You could take
it as well. Okay, race isn't scientifically real, but it's
a socially constructed thing that was based in law and
finance and physical labor and actual abuse and real blood.
So racism is that's kind of a logical slippery thing.
(48:54):
Race isn't real. How is racism real? Because we made
it real. That's the power of our mind and our
collective minds. The US dollars not real. Actually, it's just
like a collective shared delusion that's powerful enough to get
us to go to work and pay for food and housing,
right with this made up thing that has no basis
(49:18):
in like physical reality. So fiction is powerful. Things that
aren't real can make things be real. And that is
a that's a beautiful confusion and then a beautiful tension
and paradoxical thing. But I think some of the best
things in life are right, they are and they aren't
(49:39):
at the same time. It's they're they're That's kind of
a quantum thing. Keep bumping also into quantum. Stuff keeps
coming up from Sam Raider. She talks about quantum all
the time, and quantum Marvel keeps launching these quantum movies.
So from from pop culture, it's like deep you know,
emotional and psychological work. Quantum ken coming up, So there
(50:01):
must be something to it.
Speaker 3 (50:02):
There must be.
Speaker 2 (50:03):
I mean, biggest living organism in the entire world is microhizome, right,
So like that's quantum and it is all the same time, like.
Speaker 1 (50:11):
We really what is your biome telling you the.
Speaker 2 (50:15):
Visible and the invisible world? Oh my gosh, I'm not
going to keep you for the next three years here
on this sip. But like we didn't even get to
talk about like forest ecology and how that like all
of the all of the things. So I I'm going
to pull my own brain back from the radness of
quantum overlaps with everything and.
Speaker 3 (50:37):
Set us up for.
Speaker 2 (50:39):
The last complex thing that we'll discuss on our time together.
Speaker 1 (50:43):
Great, all right.
Speaker 2 (50:45):
At the end of your twenty nineteen Ted talk, now
Helen Walters ask you a question, and I'm going to
completely paraphrase here. She said, basically, there's so much ugliness
in our culture everywhere all around, and she wondered if
you had any hope and going back to what you
just said about the power of fictions that we create
and the power of stories that we create. Your answer
(51:07):
back then in twenty nineteen was about freeing ourselves from
the lies that we'd been told. And so we're sitting
here three years later. You've already talked about how things
have changed for you, about what you're willing to do
and how you're willing to show up in those three
years sense, but I want to revisit that question. Yeah,
knowing what you know, and living what you've lived, knowing
(51:29):
what's unfolded since that stage three years ago. What does
hope look like for you now?
Speaker 1 (51:36):
Hope looks like a tree. It's deeply rooted and it's
striving to grow. It's willing to change. It's not threatened
by growing a new limb or maybe losing one. It's
just this in the nature of treeness to experience all
these things. And I think there's something for me about
(52:00):
hope that it has to remain very grounded. There is
a fleeting ethereal wispy hope that you can't grab on to.
It's like smoke. I don't like that one. I think
that one's less useful. It makes for pretty words, but
maybe not much else. So I hope that's grounded. I
(52:22):
hope that grieves so that you know, at some point
it can help celebrate. That's more of my flavor. The
thing that I was feeling in that stage moment, which
is a very unscripted moment by the way, I caught
me off guard. I was like, I'm done, I'm good.
(52:42):
The fiction part that we were just talking about is
so it's it's kind of the whole thing. My hope
is grounded in our creative possibility, in our own creativity,
and we can be destructively creative, but I also think
we can be beautifully you know, hopefully creative. And so
(53:06):
when I look at when I'm grounded in the evidence
of what we've chosen to make real from our fiction,
it's pretty devastating, you know. There's there's a you could
have an indictment sheet from a grand jury for abusive
imagination by the human species and never finish reading out
that list. But there's a lot more to it, and
(53:28):
we're capable of a lot more so. Even even the
devastating things we've done to ourselves and each other is
evidence that we can create anything that we think serves
us and then follow through on it. And it's not
just a negative example. There are many positive examples of
what we have created, whether systems of government, beautiful works
(53:51):
of art, collaborative, cooperative economic things like we can use
tech differently, we can use money differently, like we can
be in relation to all of these in a way
that really serves a collective us, allows us to be
collectively selfish. So my hope is grounded in a lot
of dirt, you know, and pain, and in the knowledge
(54:13):
that ultimately we just make things up. So if we
are aware of that more, can we choose more consciously
to make up something that's better for all of us?
And I believe we can.
Speaker 3 (54:31):
That's awesome.
Speaker 2 (54:32):
It is such a joy to spend time with you.
Thank you so much for being here with me and
with us. Obviously, we're going to link to everything and
everywhere that people can find you, your Ted Talk and
your podcast in America outdoors in the show notes. Is
there anything else you want listeners to know about where
to find you.
Speaker 1 (54:50):
Yeah, I'm wherever baratun Days are found. I've been. I
don't wish I'm pretty much I'm not the only one,
but I'm like the the easiest to link to. There's
a Barton Day in Atlanta who I'm a big fan of.
I have to meet him at his new business. He
does nanotechnology stuff, he's a science He have Barretune de
(55:10):
Cola check out the other Barton Day.
Speaker 3 (55:14):
So what you're saying is you're googleable.
Speaker 1 (55:16):
I'm google doable, so find that now we're just you know,
I've been writing a lot with this new media company,
puck to at puck dot News, and that's where I'm
exploring more slowly and deeply. A lot of these themes
raise tech, democracy and our possibilities with all of that.
So if you want to have a textual experience, check
(55:39):
out what I'm up to at PUCK and what my
colleagues they are up to. I'm proud of all their reporting.
I am not a reporter, but it's good to be
in the company of people who really really do that
job while I get to opine on things and process
my emotions and feelings through words on a screen. This
has been I feel like I need a nap. This
(56:01):
has been an experience that is so beautiful. It's been
this really like heart forward, heart open journey. Thank you
for inviting me into what feels like kind of a
sacred space here, and then for what you're doing to
help us all be okay with not being okay and
to explore our relationship with grief and with hope. Appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (56:22):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (56:24):
All right, everybody, stay tuned. I'll be right back with
your questions to carry with you right after this. Each
week I leave you with some questions to carry with
you until we meet again. You know what really struck
(56:45):
me through this entire conversation with Baritunde was how easy
it was, how easy it was to weave through all
the different topics and aspects of life. We discussed, like
there's something in that for me that when you're living
this stuff, when both joy and mourning or celebration and grief,
when both of those things are welcomed and acknowledged in
(57:06):
your life, it's just like it's easy to move back
and forth between them. Being okay is normal. There's no
need to like set aside a special scheduled time to
like talk about heavy discussions about like you don't have
to do that stuff. When you have relationships where everything
is welcome, you just do it. You talk about what's
(57:28):
there when it's there, and it's so.
Speaker 3 (57:32):
Easy.
Speaker 2 (57:34):
This whole conversation made me feel really hopeful about the
joy that I stitch into my life, that there's joy
in building relationships and friendships that include everything whatever is
up at any given moment. It also really stressed the
importance of play, which is something that I full disclosure,
often forget to prioritize in my own life. And I
(57:55):
love what Baratunde said about his hope being bound with
the human power of creatingivity, Like, how can we not
have hope knowing what's in our power to create?
Speaker 3 (58:06):
That's a really interesting idea. What about you?
Speaker 2 (58:10):
What's stuck with you from this conversation. Everybody's going to
take something different from the show, but I do hope
you found something to hold on to. If you want
to tell me how today's show felt for you, or
you have thoughts about what we covered, let me know.
Tag at Refuge in Grief on all the social platforms
so I can hear how this conversation affected you. You
(58:31):
can follow the show at It's Okaypod on TikTok and
Refuge in Grief everywhere else to see video clips from
the show. Also use the hashtag It's okaypod on all
of the platforms. Not only so that I can find
you when I go looking, and I totally do search
that hashtag so I can see what you're talking about,
but use that hashtag so that other people can find
(58:51):
you too. It's a really cool way to start building
conversations and community. None of us are entirely okay, and
it's time we start talking about that together. Hashtag's just
one tool in building.
Speaker 3 (59:06):
The world that we want.
Speaker 2 (59:08):
Yeah, it's okay that you're not okay, You're in good company.
That's it for this week, friends, Remember to subscribe to
the show and leave a review. Your reviews help make
the show easier to find, which furthers our mission of
getting more people to have interesting conversations about difficult things.
And your reviews are really special to me and I.
Speaker 3 (59:30):
Love to read them.
Speaker 2 (59:32):
Coming up next week, musician and author Sarah Raimi joins
me to talk about chronic illness and why having your
music show up at a hit TV series is a
mixed bag of awesome and exhausting. Follow the show on
your favorite platforms, friends, so you don't miss an episode.
Want more on these topics, Look, grief is everywhere. As
(59:54):
my dad says, daily life is full of everyday grief
that we don't call grief. Learning how to talk about
this stuff without cliches or platitudes or simplistic dismissive statements
is an important skill for everyone. Whether you're trying to
support a friend going through a hard time, or you
work in the helping professions, or you just want to
be better at human ing. Get help to have those
(01:00:16):
conversations with trainings, professional resources, and my best selling book
It's Okay that You're Not Okay, plus The Guided Journal
for Grief at Megandivine dot Co. It's Okay that You're
Not Okay. That podcast is written and produced by me
Megan Divine. Executive producer is Amy Brown, co produced by
Elizabeth Fozzio, Logistical and social media support from Micah, Post
(01:00:40):
production and editing by the ever patient Houston Tilly. Music
provided by Wavecrash, and today's background noise provided by the
Endless Spring Drone of chainsaws cleaning up after the La
Winter rains
Host
Megan Devine
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
My Favorite Murder is a true crime comedy podcast hosted by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark. Each week, Karen and Georgia share compelling true crimes and hometown stories from friends and listeners. Since MFM launched in January of 2016, Karen and Georgia have shared their lifelong interest in true crime and have covered stories of infamous serial killers like the Night Stalker, mysterious cold cases, captivating cults, incredible survivor stories and important events from history like the Tulsa race massacre of 1921. My Favorite Murder is part of the Exactly Right podcast network that provides a platform for bold, creative voices to bring to life provocative, entertaining and relatable stories for audiences everywhere. The Exactly Right roster of podcasts covers a variety of topics including historic true crime, comedic interviews and news, science, pop culture and more. Podcasts on the network include Buried Bones with Kate Winkler Dawson and Paul Holes, That's Messed Up: An SVU Podcast, This Podcast Will Kill You, Bananas and more.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.